30.5.12

Clay Shirky on Creativity

When I think about groups and institutions grappling with creativity, particularly institutions, one of the odd things about institutions, and the bigger they are the more they have a problem with this, is that they often reverse the second law of thermodynamics: it becomes easier to start doing something than to stop doing something. A big part of it is knowing when to stop doing stuff that used to work but that's not working anymore. ... Getting in the habit of understanding what's stopped working and stopping doing that is huge input to any creative organisation. Because in many cases it is not filling the helium balloon but cutting off the sandbag that gets you aloft.

My university often comes up with new things for staff to do, what a boon if they also started to think of things for staff to stop doing.